Christ and the Virgin in the House at Nazareth (c. 1640): Art, History and Details

Christ and the Virgin in the House at Nazareth (c. 1640) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Francisco de Zurbarán (Spanish, 1598–1664).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Stories of Christ’s childhood and adolescence became increasingly popular during the Counter-Reformation because they were easily understood by a broad public. Rather than taking a story from the Bible, Zurbarán appears to have invented this subject, in which Jesus pricks himself on a crown of thorns he is weaving, foretelling his later torment at the Crucifixion. Despite the grand scale and monumental figures, the work has remarkable intimacy and quietness, emphasizing such details as the Virgin’s tears.

Object facts

• Title: Christ and the Virgin in the House at Nazareth
• Date: c. 1640
• Creator attribution: Francisco de Zurbarán (Spanish, 1598–1664)
• Culture: Spain
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 201 x 256 x 10 cm (79 1/8 x 100 13/16 x 3 15/16 in.); Unframed: 165 x 218.2 cm (64 15/16 x 85 7/8 in.)
• Collection: P - Spanish before 1800
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1960.117

A detail from the museum

Zurbarán, also a still-life painter, tilts the tabletop to emphasize the symbolic books and fruit.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lurie, Ann Tzeutchler. "Two Devotional Paintings by Sassoferrato and Carlo Dolci." The Bulletin of The Cleveland Museum of Art LV (1968): 224-227.
• Delenda, Odile, and Almudena Ros de Barbero. Francisco de Zurbarán 1598-1664. Madrid: Fundación Arte Hispánico, 2009.
• Iacono, Margaret. Masterpieces of European Painting from the Cleveland Museum of Art. New York: The Frick Collection, 2006

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.